they might have applied), he was irresponsible
at the time he committed the crime, it is unlikely that any prosecutor
would bring him to trial. If, however, they reported that he was not
only sane, but had been sane at the time of his crime, it is probable
that any proposed defence of insanity would be abandoned, while if it
was still urged by the accused, the opinion of such a board would carry
far greater weight at the ultimate trial of the case than the individual
opinions of experts retained and paid by either side for that particular
occasion only, and having had only a comparatively limited opportunity
for examination. At any rate, if the court called in the services of
such a board of medical judges to assist as amici curie in determining
the defendant's condition, while their opinion would not be conclusive
upon the jury, it would at least do away with the present lamentable
necessity of learned men answering "yes" or "no" to a hypothetical
question fifty thousand words long, when the most superficial personal
examination of the accused would settle the matter definitely in
their minds. Such a procedure is in general use in Germany and other
continental countries, and is likewise substantially followed in
Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire.*

* Another equally efficacious means of dealing with the matter would
be to substitute, upon a defendant's plea of insanity, a full jury of
experts--like any "special" jury--for the ordinary petit jury.

There is good reason to hope that we may soon see in all the states
adequate provision for preliminary examination upon the plea of
insanity, and a new test of criminal responsibility consistent with
humanity and modern medical knowledge. Even then, although murderers
who indulge in popular crime will probably be acquitted on the ground of
insanity, we shall at least be spared the melancholy spectacle of juries
arbitrarily committing feeble-minded persons charged with homicide to
imprisonment at hard labor for life, and in a large measure do away with
the present unedifying exhibition of two groups of hostile experts, each
interpreting an archaic and inadequate test of criminal responsibility
in his own particular way, and each conscientiously able to reach a
diametrically opposite conclusion upon precisely the same facts.

CHAPTER XI. The Mala Vita in America

There are a million and a half of Italians in the United States, of whom
nearly